Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy awards for her role on the popular comedy TV series M*A*S*H, died on Friday, according to her representative.
She died at her home in New York at age 87, her publicist Harlan Boll told the BBC. She likely died of natural causes, although a coroner’s report is pending.
On M*A*S*H, Swit played US Army nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan. The series, which followed a mobile Army surgical hospital during the Korean war, ran for 11 seasons from 1972 to 1983.
Swit was nominated for numerous awards, and appeared in nearly every episode of the series, including the finale which attracted a record 106m US viewers.
The show remains one of the most successful and acclaimed series in US television history. Its season finale was the most watched episode of any TV series in history when it ended in 1983.
As “Hot Lips,” Swit played a tough but vulnerable Army nurse who gained the nickname after having an affair with Major Frank Burns, who was played by Larry Linville.
The show used comedy and pranks to tackle tough issues like racism, sexism and the impacts of PTSD within the military, at a time when US forces were withdrawing from Vietnam and dealing with the consequences of that conflict.
It was based on the 1968 book, “MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors,” penned by a former Army surgeon.
Swit was born Loretta Szwed in New Jersey and trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.
Along with M*A*S*H, she also appeared in numerous other TV shows, movies and even game shows over her career.
She took to the Broadway stage in plays including Same Time, Next Year; Mame; and Shirley Valentine – a role for which she won Chicago’s top theatre prize, the Sarah Siddons Award.
Her TV work included appearances on The Muppet Show, Mission: Impossible and Murder, She Wrote.
In addition to her Emmys, Swit was nominated for four Golden Globe awards.
“Acting is not hiding to me, it’s revealing. We give you license to feel,” she said in an interview with the Star magazine in 2010. “That’s the most important thing in the world, because when you stop feeling, that’s when you’re dead.”
Speaking to an author about her character on M*A*S*H she said: “Around the second or third year, I decided to try to play her as a real person, in an intelligent fashion, even if it meant hurting the jokes. … She was a character in constant flux; she never stopped developing.”
Swit was also an artist and animal rights activist, and established a charity to campaign against animal cruelty, according to a statement from her publicist Mr Boll.
Jamie Farr, who also starred in M*A*S*H as Corporal Klinger, called Swit his “adopted sister”.
“From the first time I met her, on what was supposed to be a one-day appearance on M*A*S*H, we embraced each other and that became a lifetime friendship,” Farr said in a statement. “I can’t begin to express how much she will be missed.”
(BBC News)
